Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (53 page)

‘Here, dry your eyes. What’s the matter?’

‘Oh – everything,’ she said, ‘absolutely everything. I’ve just completely messed up. Messed up everything, you’ve no idea—’

‘I haven’t, really,’ he said, looking at her. ‘How about you tell me? I guess it upset you, hearing about your boyfriend—’

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she said, ‘stop calling him that.’ And she started crying again.

‘All right, your ex-boyfriend. Izzie, the man’s a schmuck, I told you before.’

‘I know, I know he is, more than ever. But I didn’t know, Nick, I really didn’t know Adele was so ill. I would never, ever have – have – oh God—’

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, and even in her wretchedness it was so good to hear that endearment, ‘of course you wouldn’t.’

‘And I’ve completely wrecked everything, my friendship with Adele, with Noni—’

‘She doesn’t seem the best kind of friend for you anyway,’ he said.

Izzie stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well – she’s kind of ridiculous,’ he said finally. ‘She’s gorgeous, I give you that. But – not too much like you, Princess.’

‘She’s not really like that,’ Izzie said, wiping her eyes. ‘She’s really very sweet and sensible.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘No, it’s true. Oh, I’m such an idiot. You’ve no idea.’

‘Want to tell me? Again?’

‘Again! Nick, you don’t know half of it.’

‘OK. You tell me the other half. Go on, it might help.’

‘Well – well, first of all,’ she said, blowing her nose on his hanky, ‘first of all I had this affair with – with Kit. You know?’

‘Sure. Nice guy.’

‘Very nice. When I was only sixteen. We were going to run away together, to Scotland, to get married there—’

‘Sounds romantic. And? Why didn’t you?’

‘They stopped us. When we were on the train.’

‘Because you were so young?’

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘No, because he was – he was my half-brother.’

There was a very long, fierce silence; Nick sat staring at her, and she stared back at him, so shocked at herself for telling him, so shocked at telling anyone about this thing she had thought she would never recover from. She had been so afraid of it, always, without being quite sure why, had spent much of the time denying it even to herself. It was so ugly, so horribly shocking; not so much that Kit’s father was Sebastian, not Oliver; not even that Celia and Sebastian had been lovers for years, or that Kit had been brought up by Celia and Oliver as their son; but that she had fallen in love with her own brother, had almost slept with him, married him.

‘So – just a minute. Sebastian’s his dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘And – Celia led everyone to believe that Kit was her husband’s son?’

‘Well – yes. She had to, in a way. For a long time she hadn’t been absolutely sure, but as he grew up, he looked so like Sebastian, there was just no doubting it.’

‘And they never told you? Either of you?’

‘Not till – till that day, no. When they stopped us from running away.’

‘That was kind of remiss of them, I’d say.’ Nick’s eyes on hers were very thoughtful.

‘They didn’t know, didn’t realise. That we were – well, in love with each other. I was such a baby, and—’

‘Exactly. Such a baby.’

‘They didn’t tell me even then, actually, they thought I was too young. But I found out, years later, I heard Sebastian and Kit shouting at each other, and I – I realised—’

‘Good God,’ he said, and he looked absolutely shocked. ‘How perfectly horrible for you. My poor, poor darling.’

‘It gave me nightmares,’ she said, too distressed even to notice the darling, ‘for ages. I was so shocked by it. Adele was wonderful, she was the only person who really helped me. I was so angry with Father and with Celia. I got over it, of course, forgave them, as Oliver had. You do, when you grow up, you get to understand things better. But it was – very hard at the time. And knowing lots of the family had known, that there was a sort of conspiracy to keep it from me. I felt so stupid, so naive, such a fool. And then,’ she said, a sob rising in her voice again, ‘then when I’d got over that, I had to go and sleep with one of the Warwicks. Celia’s grandson.’

‘Why’d you do that?’ he said, his voice very gentle.

‘Oh, because he was miserable, I was miserable, I’d never had another boyfriend, I was drunk, he was drunk, you know the sort of thing.’

‘Just about,’ he said.

‘It was only once. At a party. And – ’ for a moment she was tempted: to tell him the rest, about the baby, about the abortion. It would have been such a relief, such a dazzling, blinding relief. But she couldn’t. It was one step too far, one thing too awful, too wrong. ‘ – that just finished me off,’ she said. ‘I felt so worthless, so cheap, so ashamed of myself.’

‘Oh Izzie. I’d say he was a lucky guy. How long did that last?’

‘It didn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘It was – just one night. He announced his engagement about a week later. To someone else, I mean. I had to be her bridesmaid.’

‘My God. You poor kid.’ He shook his head, half smiled at her; his eyes were very soft, very concerned.

‘Well – in a way it wasn’t really so bad. I suppose.’

Not told this way, anyway, no shining instruments, no terror, no pain, no—

‘Sounds quite bad. You poor, poor baby.’

‘And then I got so down, I thought I’d never find anyone, anyone who’d love me, care about me, at all. I guess that’s why I got involved with Geordie. What a good idea
that
was.’

‘How did you get over here? Don’t quite follow that bit.’

‘Well, it was Celia’s idea. She thought it would do me good. She was wonderful, she noticed I was really depressed, and – well of course she knew about Kit, she had always worried about me afterwards – I found myself telling her everything. And she suggested I stayed with Barty for a while. And you know the rest. Everything was so lovely, I met you and Mike, I loved my job. And then what do I do, I go and have that stupid affair.’

‘Ye-es. We’ve probably said enough about that one. That all?’

‘No,’ she said, and started crying harder than ever. ‘No it’s not all, is it? I’ve wrecked things with you as well now, by being so stupid, throwing myself at you, embarrassing you, thinking you . . . well, you . . .’

‘That I what?’ he said, very gently.

‘That you – liked me. That you’d want me, it was so stupid, just because I was drunk, and, and—’

‘And what?’

‘And I decided I wanted you. I’m so, so sorry, Nick, for spoiling everything, our friendship, our working relationship, I really am such a complete idiot—’

‘Now just a minute,’ he said, ‘can we rewind a little here? You wanted me? That night?’

‘Yes. Yes of course I did. But only because I was so drunk and excited about the presentation and—’

‘Only because—?’

‘Well – well – ’

‘Izzie,’ he said, ‘Izzie, never did a girl ever get anything so wrong. I adore you, I think you’re quite horribly sexy, I always have, I wanted you so much that night I thought I would expire. But how could I do that to you, take advantage of you? I’ve been brought up better than that, for God’s sake.’

He looked quite indignant; she stopped crying and stared at him, trying to make sense of it all, to disentangle what she had thought from what he was saying.

‘You – you wanted – but Nick, in the morning you were so odd, you have been ever since, I obviously embarrassed you to death, I felt so ashamed—’

‘I
was
embarrassed, sure I was. Only by my own behaviour. Staring at you like that, letting you walk past me buck naked, not pretending I was asleep, as a gentleman should – I felt so bad. And then kissing you like that, almost letting my feelings get the better of me. I felt terrible—’

‘Oh,’ she said. Everything had become very still; she just sat there staring at him. Then suddenly she smiled, and put out her hand and stroked his cheek, very gently.

‘We seem to have got everything a bit – wrong,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go back to my place and have a replay?’

They managed to find a cab. ‘Just as well,’ he said to her, laughing, ‘otherwise it would have had to be the office floor,’ and went home, home to her apartment.

They said very little then, went straight into her room, lay down on her bed, removing their clothes, kissing frantically, endlessly, greedy, joyful, impatient for the pleasure; and then he stopped suddenly, leaned away from her, smiled into her eyes.

‘What?’ she said, alarmed. ‘What is it, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing at all. But I have to tell you something.’

‘What?’

‘It’s this,’ he said, starting to kiss her again. ‘I have never seen anything as beautiful, ever, not in any bedroom, not on any night, not in my entire life, as you, walking across that room in there. You know what I thought?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘what did you think?’

‘I thought here I am, lying in the gutter, looking up at the stars.’

CHAPTER 28

She looked better than she had; calmer, happier, less exhausted. Celia didn’t ask Barty why Charlie wasn’t with her, of course; but Barty told her anyway. She invited her to dinner at Claridges, while Jenna and Cathy were at the Warwicks’, and said she wanted to talk to her.

‘I feel I owe it to you,’ she said, raising her glass to Celia. ‘You’ve been so – so generous about everything. I can’t just arrive without him and not tell you why. But I’d rather you didn’t tell the others.’

‘Barty, I am not in the habit of gossiping,’ said Celia severely, and then added, a flash of humour in her dark eyes, ‘that isn’t quite true, of course. But I am not in the habit of breaking confidences. As you very well know.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

Barty looked at her; for the first time, Celia was beginning to age. Her illness had taken a severe toll; she was still desperately tired-looking, and her face was drawn, the cheeks gaunt, the lovely eyes even slightly sunken. She was still very glamorous, dressed that evening in one of the new sack dresses in light-navy wool; it might have been designed specifically for her, disguising, as it did, her extreme thinness, hinting at a shape she no longer had. She had been ordered to stop smoking; when she drew out her cigarette case, Barty shook her head, tried to take it from her.

‘Celia, really! You are so stupid.’

‘Nonsense. I never smoke before dinner. Well, before dinner time. That means I’ve cut out at least twenty a day. Quite enough. Really, Barty, you can’t expect me to get through a day at Lyttons without smoking at the end of it.’

‘Is it really so bad?’

‘Well – you know, difficult.’

‘You’ve been doing awfully well. The figures are most impressive. Bigger profit than the New York office this year. I shouldn’t be telling you that, should I?’

‘Of course you should. I can’t think why not.’

Barty smiled at her; Celia would never come to terms, she knew, with the fact that she was notionally her superior.

‘Well – I have some very good plans in place for next year.’

‘Oh really? What?’

‘Oh – a historical series. Very big in the States at the moment, history. A marvellous mystery story. I’d like to launch a paperback house, but it’s out of the question at the moment, the numbers are too huge. Centaur seems to be doing well. You can do these things on a small scale here. Over there it means millions of dollars investment.’

‘My biggest problem is keeping the standard up. It isn’t easy. Jay is getting very lazy, I’m afraid, and Giles is – well, just Giles. So dreadfully dull in his thinking. It’s Keir I’ve got my eye on, he’s such a brilliant young man. And, of course, one day Elspeth will be back. We have to keep the younger generation with us—’

‘Of course,’ said Barty soberly, thinking that perhaps that was what she was lacking in New York, someone truly representative of the younger generation. ‘But surely, dear Celia, you must be getting tired of it all? Don’t you ever wish you could just – walk away from them?’

‘No,’ said Celia, looking at her as if she had suggested she should take up street walking or joining a convent. ‘Of course not. Do you?’

Barty said she did not, of course, either; and then that she would like to try to explain about Charlie.

‘It’s all dreadfully sad,’ she said, ‘but you know, I feel much better in a way. Trying to make the relationship work was like pushing water uphill. I was so wrong to marry him. I don’t know why I did.’

‘I do,’ said Celia, ‘same reason I married Bunny. You were lonely.’

‘Yes, but now I spend my life trying to get away from him.’

‘Of course. Exactly the same thing.’ She looked at Barty and smiled. ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ she said.

‘I haven’t done anything yet. But I am going to tell him I don’t want to live with him any more. I can’t. He’s a fantasist, and you can’t have a relationship with a fantasist. The real problem is the girls, they both adore him.’

‘Well, they can still see plenty of him. He doesn’t have much to do, as far as I can make out.’

‘No, but it’s not as simple as that. Jenna’s going to find it very hard to cope with, I know. She was so happy for me, happy I wasn’t on my own any more. And Cathy is a very complex little person—’

‘Barty,’ said Celia quite severely, ‘you must do what is best for yourself. Not them.’

‘But I’m not sure I know what that is. Except that I can’t go on accepting all these lies. I can’t even bear to discuss it with him. Of course it wasn’t all his fault, I’m sure he had a really hard time. In many ways worse than if Meg had really had cancer. But – why keep it from me? Why go on and on in this wretched pretence that he’s something he’s not? What kind of basis for a relationship is that? Poor Charlie,’ she added soberly, ‘I do feel quite sorry for him, you know. As well as angry.’

‘Don’t,’ said Celia, ‘he doesn’t deserve it.’

Jenna was bitterly disappointed that Billy and Joan and the boys weren’t coming to the wedding; she found the explanation that they were too busy to leave the farm completely unacceptable.

‘It’s only one day. And it is a family wedding.’

‘I know, Jenna, but you can’t just leave a farm.’

‘You’ve left Lyttons. For three weeks.’

‘I know, but that’s different. There aren’t any animals at Lyttons, you can’t walk out on a stable full of horses and hope they’ll be all right for a few days. Billy just doesn’t feel he can get away.’

Jenna suspected this was not entirely true; there was a cowman at the farm, she remembered being told, and a stable lad as well. She looked at her mother.

‘Is it because Billy hasn’t been asked?’

‘Of course he’s been asked,’ said Barty. ‘I’ve seen his letter to Kit. He just can’t come. Now, Jenna, can we change the subject please? I’m getting rather tired of it. You still need to get some shoes, how about—’

‘I’m sick of shopping,’ said Jenna. ‘Mother, is it because he doesn’t feel comfortable about coming? All those terribly important people, lords and ladies and so on?’

Barty hesitated. Then she said, ‘Something like that, yes. I think it is. To be absolutely honest. And I think the boys would hate it.’

‘Why?’

‘Boys do hate weddings. They hate getting dressed up and they won’t know anybody—’

‘Well,’ said Jenna, ‘I can certainly understand that. But we must go down there, then. I so want to see them.’

‘We can’t. Not till after the wedding.’

‘Why not? It’s three days away still.’

‘Because we all have too much to do.’

‘I don’t. Could I go down there at least? Take Cathy, maybe?’

‘No. You’d get lost.’

‘I wouldn’t. I have eyes in my head. I can read a train timetable. I get myself to school and back—’

‘Jenna, no.’

Jenna walked out of her mother’s room and slammed the door. Then she went down to the hotel reception.

‘Do you have a train timetable?’ she asked.

Cathy said she wouldn’t come, she had more shopping to do. Jenna knew what she really wanted to do was hang around Fergal, Venetia’s youngest boy; he was quite gorgeous, she had to admit, seventeen and the most handsome boy she had ever seen, very tall and athletic-looking with dark hair and almost black eyes. His sister Lucy had told her he was terribly brave.

‘He’s a brilliant rider, Granny says. He went skiing last year and went down all the black runs, that’s the very dangerous ones—’

‘I know what a black run is,’ Jenna said airily; but she was impressed just the same. She was pretty brave herself, but she didn’t think she’d tackle a black run. Fergal seemed to quite like her; but he was clearly much more taken with Cathy. Cathy put on her very best performance for him, fluttering her eyelashes wildly, hanging breathlessly on everything he said, laughing hysterically at his rather weak jokes, and getting physically close to him at the slightest opportunity. He’d been standing at the hall table the day before at the house in Berkeley Square, looking at the newspapers; Cathy joined him, leaning against him whenever she could, brushing his hand with hers, and expressing an immense interest in the forthcoming march to Aldermaston by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which Jenna knew she couldn’t care less about, asking Fergal to explain why they were marching and what difference it might make, gazing up at him with her huge blue eyes and telling him how clever he was to understand it all. The ghastly thing was how impressed he seemed to be. Jenna could never understand how boys couldn’t see through that sort of thing . . .

It was actually very easy to get to Beaconsfield; first the tube to Marylebone, and then out on the mainline train. She sat on the train feeling terribly excited, not only that she had made her escape, but about seeing them all, Billy and Joan and Joe and Michael. They had somehow come to epitomise England for her, England and family, far more than any of the Lyttons. New York and London were staging posts. Her mother had talked to her endlessly about her own childhood, had said it was so important that Jenna understood about the early days in Lambeth, about the tiny dark rooms in the basement, about her father, all her brothers and sisters, and her much-loved mother; and then about moving into Cheyne Walk, how vast it had seemed, how forbidding, how miserable she had been, how much she had missed everyone.

‘You should have just gone home,’ Jenna said, but Barty had said in those days children did what they were told and accepted things, and besides, her mother had been so grateful for everything that Celia was doing for her, she didn’t really think Barty should come back.

‘And then, you see, I became estranged from the others, they were jealous of what I had. In the end only Billy was at all nice to me—’

‘So you didn’t belong in either place?’

‘Not really. Not for a long time. But in the end, I was happy, I was very fond of Giles, we ganged up on the twins and when Kit was born, I was his godmother, I think that was what finally made me feel part of the family. And Lady Beckenham, Celia’s mother, being so wonderfully good to Billy, of course; I sometimes think he felt even more part of the family than I did.’

Perhaps they were the links, Jenna thought that morning, Billy and Joan, the links between her and her mother’s family, and therefore immensely important. Perhaps that was why she had felt so much she wanted to see them all again.

The train pulled in at a station: ‘Beaconsfield! Beaconsfield!’ She hadn’t expected the journey to be so short; she grabbed her coat and bag and jumped out on to the platform, just in time before the train pulled out again in a cloud of noise and steam, and accosted a porter.

‘Where are the cabs, please?’

‘The cabs? You mean the taxis. Over there. Where d’you want to go, my dear?’

‘Ashingham. Home Farm, Ashingham.’

‘Ashingham! That’s a long way. A very long way to take a taxi. Can’t someone come and fetch you?’

‘No, no they can’t. They’re too busy and anyway, I want to surprise them.’

‘It’ll cost you a fair bit,’ he said, looking at her with concern.

‘I don’t care, I have lots of money.’

‘Well, you’re a fine one,’ he said. ‘Here, Jim, this young lady wants to go out to Ashingham, to Home Farm. Can you take her? She says she has lots of money.’

It didn’t seem a very long way to her, used, as she was, to the long haul out to Southampton, only just over half an hour; she enjoyed it, studying the English countryside, thinking how different it was from Long Island, or Massachusetts, for that matter. It was extraordinary that fields and hedges and trees and skyscapes could rearrange themselves so totally from place to place. Rather like features on faces, she supposed; she had always thought it odd that two eyes, a nose and a mouth could form so many millions of variables.

‘That’s one pound, ten shillings then,’ said the driver, pulling up at the top of the lane as she had asked him to; she wanted to walk down and surprise them. ‘That all right for you?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Here—’ she fumbled in her purse ‘ – oh dear, I’ve only got a five-pound note, would that be all right?’

‘I suppose so.’ He obviously wasn’t very pleased; she handed him one of the lovely five-pound notes Barty had given her, great big black and white parchment-like things, with curvy writing all over them, looking more like an official certificate than money.

‘You can find your way all right then from here, can you?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve been here before. Thank you. Here—’ she gave him ten shillings back from her change. ‘That’s for you.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ he said.

‘Not at all. Thank you again.’

She got out of the taxi, started down the lane, turned to wave at him; he was still staring at her. She supposed it must be her accent. The lane down to the farm, little more than a track, was wet and muddy, with a stream running down the side of it, but very pretty with high hedges and primroses just starting to bud. She stopped and picked a bunch; she could give them to Joan. Over her head, willows waved against the blue sky, a dusting of green just starting to appear on them; she lifted her head up to them, smiling, aware of a great happiness suddenly, feeling the first spring warmth of the sun on her face.

She could hear cows lowing behind the hedge; she came to a gate and stood looking in at them; she had always liked cows, with their peaceful faces, their long eyelashes, their sweet breath.

She walked on; another field, ah, she remembered this one, it was just before the big corner that hid the house, it was where – yes! Yes, he was still there, her friend, every bit as huge as she remembered him, munching steadily as if he planned to consume the whole field by lunch time. She climbed up the gate, held out some grass to him.

‘Lord B! Hi! Here, come on, remember me? You broke my arm once, come on, good boy.’

He ambled over to her, bent his great head to take the grass she offered him. She patted his nose, smiled, leaned forward to kiss it.

‘Hi, beautiful! It’s so good to see you again. Here, let me give you a mint, I have some in my pocket, my horse at home loves mints—’